NGC6166

NGC 6166 anchors the galaxy cluster Abell 2199 in western Hercules at about 410 million light-years. So why did it make my Arp-like list? If you dig into its core you find there are four objects in there. Or are they foreground objects or background ones seen right through the galaxy? Adding to the confusion, three of the four have redshift data which vary rather greatly. While NGC 6166 is listed with a redshift of about 413 million light years, component A has a redshift that puts it 422 million light-years distant, B 369 million and C 446 million. Seems hard to believe objects around the center of the galaxy could have such a wide variation in velocity. How was the 413 figure determined, an average? That is 408 if the pure mean is used. There is a 4th component D is not listed in NED though it is listed at the NGC Project. My image seems to show a 5th member south of B/D and north of C. I think I see it in the Sloan image as well. Likely is just a foreground star. Adding to the confusion, there are 4 galaxies carrying the NGC 6166 name labeled A through D that are unrelated to the core features A through D. These galaxies are identified by name in the annotated image.

NGC 6166 was discovered by William Herschel on May 30, 1791. It is in the second H400 program.

I normally list cluster members by catalog number in the annotated image but this one is so dense even listing just by redshift distance is difficult. Those few with NGC or other commonly used numbers are shown. There's an interesting blue object NW of NGC 6166 at a redshift determined distance of 5.3 billion light years. It's very unusual to see a blue object at this distance that isn't a quasar. This one is reported as an Ultraviolet Excess object by the Galex Uv orbiting observatory and as a galaxy by the Sloan Survey. Usually UvES objects are quasars but in this case, it appears it really is a very active blue galaxy that is amazingly bright. Compare it to the small cluster galaxy above it that is rather red. Hard to tell the blue one is 11 times further away.

Unlike most fields, nearly every obvious galaxy had a listed redshift. There were only a few exceptions. They were listed in NED, unlike the totally missing ones I often find, just had no redshift data. I left those blank. So when you see one with no redshift it isn't that I missed it, there was none to list. Since it didn't happen all that often this annotation is by far the most complex I've done. It took more than the hour or so most take. I hope this is the all time record. I'm not looking forward to another! All the labels made the compressed size of the image twice as large as normal.

NED says NGC 6166 is 1.9 minutes along its long dimension. This means it is about 225 million light-years in diameter. That's one huge galaxy. It is classed as a cD elliptical. Nearly everything around it is puny by comparison. While it is far larger than our Milky Way galaxy the others in the group is mostly smaller than our galaxy. The exception is UGC 10420 at a diameter of 150 million light-years. It is a barred spiral classed as SB(r)b.

Many of the cluster members are of about the same angular size as the far more distant galaxies in the image. Many of these cluster at about 1 billion light-years and other groups at 2.3 and 3.5 billion light-years. Quasars are scattered about the image ranging out past 10 billion light-years. These are hard to find among the vast number of cluster dwarf galaxies in the annotated image. I probably should have only annotated non-cluster galaxies.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10', RGB=2x10'x3, STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for NGC6166

NGC6175

NGC 6175 is a pair of interacting galaxies in the Abell 2197E(ast) galaxy cluster in western Hercules about 410 million light-years from earth. The cluster is centered on the huge elliptical galaxy NGC 6173.

It is rather ambiguous that the pair of galaxies making up NGC 6175 are interacting from images of it but the strong radio emissions make it quite evident the pair is interacting. Also, faint plumes can be seen south of the southern member. The western side of the northern member has an odd brightening separated from the rest of the galaxy by a faint dust lane which carries its own designation. I can't tell if it is a plume or not. As the object's hard to see as a separate object I didn't annotate it. It is [BFW2006] J247.48177+40.63115 for those wanting to look it up. The coordinates are in its name. I was surprised that there's little on this interacting pair. It was discovered by William Herschel on March 18, 1787 but isn't in either of the Herschel 400 observing lists.

The cD galaxy for the Abell cluster is NGC 6173 a huge shell elliptical galaxy. I had no idea of its size or shells before taking this image. If I had I'd have put a lot more time into it as they just barely show in my image. The obvious part of the galaxy measures some 94 arc seconds across translating to a size of 183,000 light-years. That's large but then the obvious shell beyond this measures 175 arc seconds across for a size of 340,000 light-years. But I see hints of a yet larger shell that extends past ASK 164838.0 to ASK 165386.0 to the northwest and about an equal distance to the southeast. That makes it some 320 arc seconds across and 620,000 light-years in diameter. I need to revisit this field with a much longer exposure time. It was discovered by William Herschel the same night as NGC 6175 and also is not on either of the Herschel 400 observing programs.

ASK 165386.0 has a plume so it may be interacting with NGC 6173. It lies at the same distance so could certainly have been distorted by it.

At the top of the frame is maybe NGC NGC 6174. Problem is which of three galaxies is it, if any. NED says it is the combination of two to the east sharing a common halo. The NGC project says it is the single galaxy to the west at the same declination. I've labeled both with a question mark after the NGC 6174 label. The discussion at the NGC Project is too long to include here nor can I directly link to it. Go to http://www.ngcicproject.org/dss/dss_n6100.asp then click on the NGC 6174 Data button and scroll down to the Historical Release Notes/Correction for NGC 6174 section.

The other NGC galaxy in the field is NGC 6180. NED says it is S0 while the NGC project says E?. It was discovered on June 23, 1876 by Jean Marie Édouard Stephan of Marseille Observatory using their 80cm reflector.

Since all of the cluster members reside within about 10% of 410 million light-years I didn't include distances for cluster members, just their catalog name using the shortest name possible to reduce the clutter annotating so many objects creates. Non-cluster objects with redshift information do show their distance in billions of light-years. Seeing was really moving the stars around the night I took this creating rather wonky stars. Yet another reason for retaking it next year. Seeing was so bad the three blue frames taken the first night were completely unusable as the stars were all over the place. I tried again the following night but only one of the two was usable leaving the image a bit blue starved. Yet a third reason to redo this one.

This is my first August image. While July was poor allowing me only 12 objects captured, August was even worse with only 8 captured even though nights were longer. If the weather this year is becoming the norm thanks to global warming, I'm going to have a lot more time for my other hobbies!

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RG=2x10' B=1x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for NGC6175

NGC6181

NGC 6181 is a rather nice spiral nearly everyone, even the pros tend to ignore. When they do mention it they can't even agree as to its classification. NED says SA(rs)c (no bar) while in another section it says SAB(rs)c (it has a bar). Most of the internet sites covering it say SBc. That omits the inner ring. Seligman says SBc? What earns it the question mark I don't know but he sees a bar but not the inner ring. I can't see the ring either that NED sees. Bar's are not always seen in visible light so it may exist in other wavelengths. Or the elongated nucleus is taken for the bar.

What is covered to some extent is SN 1926B. It appeared in the edge of a blue nebula in the galaxy, likely a star cloud as it isn't strong in H alpha light from the one photo in H alpha I found of it. I assume their filter accommodates its 107 million light-year redshift. I've marked the cloud in the annotated image.

This galaxy is in Hercules and is about 110 million light-years distant by both redshift and non-non-redshift measurements. It's rare to see such a close agreement. It was discovered by William Herschel on April 28, 1788. It is in the second H400 observing program. That was one reason I had it on the to-do list but it was also a rather neat looking galaxy, something I'd not noted until last winter when I upped its importance level in my to-do list so it was finally taken Last May. Conditions were so bad that data was all unusable, it was taken again the next month even though by the time the weather allowed any imaging it was getting further from the meridian than I normally image. During the first red frame (and after one blue and one green frame conditions went bad, So bad the red frame and following blue and green frames were unusable. I was outside my T point map so had to guide and the guide star kept vanishing for several minutes at a time. Finally, the second red frame, while poor was sort of usable. I made it work but due to the far worse seeing for it there are some red flares to the northwest. I sort of dealt with them. Having only one red frame I had to clone out a bright satellite that went through the one usable red frame. That may have skewed the color of stars the brilliant satellite went over.

14" LX100R @ f/10, L=4x10' RGB=1x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for NGC6181

NGC6207

NGC 6207 is a much imaged galaxy but almost always because it is in the same field with M13 the rather famous globular cluster to its south southwest. It was on my to-do list as an object in the original Herschel 400 observing program. It was discovered by William Herschel on May 16, 1787. My comments from April 20, 1985 at 120x under fair skies (humidity reduced transparency) with my 10" f/5 are rather sparse reading "Small, oval galaxy, evenly bright. No nucleus seen." That's it. Apparently I wasn't impressed. My image shows a very obvious star near its nucleus. It appears to be about magnitude 13.5 yet I didn't mention it. I assume transparency was worse than I realized that night. It certainly is far brighter than the actual core to the south. So at least I was right that no core was seen. It's not obvious even in my image.

NED classifies it as SA(s)c with HII emission while the NGC Project says S... and Seligman says Sc?. Arm structure is certainly ill defined visually. References to IR images indicate the pattern may be stronger at that wavelength. One paper considers it an isolated spiral galaxy. It references 5 dwarf companions. These are labeled A-E in the annotated image. The paper is at: http://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/pdf/2008/32/aa09666-08.pdf and includes an IR image showing the spiral pattern a bit better than my image. The field stars are greatly suppressed in IR helping to show what it is hiding.

Distance to this galaxy is a bit of a puzzle. Many web pages say 30 million light-years but none give a reference. NED's redshift says 40 million while non redshift measurements there say about 62 million. So a two times difference. Also the paper mentioned above gives a size as 3 arc minutes. Even using their image I can't see it that large. I get about 2.7 arc minutes. Both on my image and theirs. Maybe they rounded. Using that I get a size of 23,600, 31,400 and 48,700 light-years. Flip that 3 sided coin. Though if the smaller sizes are right those dwarf galaxies are really super dwarfs. Dwarf E I measure at 5 arc seconds which is about 1,500 light-years at the 62 million light-year distance. These are tiny galaxies if the paper is right that they are part of the NGC 6207 system.

The other "major" galaxy usually captured in M13 images is IC 4617 an Sbc spiral according to NED and Sbc? by Seligman. It was discovered by Edward Barnard of dark nebulae fame. I can't find a date for its discovery however. This identification is a bit suspect. Barnard's position, and he was usually very accurate, has nothing but some of M13's stars. This galaxy is almost 1 minute further east and correct in declination. Thus most feel it is the galaxy Barnard found. Even Barnard could get something wrong it would seem. Though Barnard's notes appear to be missing so it could be Dreyer who got the position wrong. I agree with Seligman's length of 45 arc seconds which if the distance of 490 million light-years is correct works out to be a length of 107,000 light-years. Thus while it appears much smaller than NGC 6207 it is really much larger.

There are 3 proven quasars in the field and another 5 likely quasars. The latter are listed as UvES in the annotated image. Arp tried to link fields with lots of galaxies to active galaxies. Since NGC 6207 is not very active at all but for a few HII regions common to many spiral galaxies I wonder how he'd have explained all these quasars. No matter how many such fields were pointed out to him he stuck to his ideas they were ejected from active galaxies and their great redshifts were unrelated to the expansion of the universe but depended on how long it had been since they were ejected. I don't pretend to understand his logic.

I was initially fooled by a galaxy on the western edge of my image ASK 256119. On my FITS images it appeared just like a typical asteroid trail but for being a bit dimmer at either end. I put that down to conditions where weren't all that great for transparency. But turns out the Minor Planet Center shows no asteroids in the field. The galaxy would appear to be a candidate for the Flat Galaxy Catalog but is too faint? It certainly has no significant central bulge.

The stars in the lower right of my image are on the outskirts of M13. That's why there's a sudden increase in stars in that part of the image.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RGB=2x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for NGC6207

NGC6211

NGC 6211 was on my list for three reasons. First it was an odd galaxy, secondly it was a very red galaxy and third, it was part of a chain of red galaxies, all apparently at the same distance. I finally got around to it on June 17, 2013. The several years delay turned out to be serendipitous. Unknown to me, on May 29th supernova 2013cw blew up in the galaxy. I didn't discover this until I went to process the image. So there was the fourth reason to look at this galaxy though I didn't know it at the time.

All 4 galaxies in the chain are at a redshift look back distance of 240 million light-years. This makes NGC 6211 about 100,000 light-years across. Besides its large amorphous red halo, it has a bright white core region that has a couple bright regions besides the very core. Just outside this is a dark band in some areas. At first, I thought I'd done something stupid to create this band when processing it but it is seen faintly in the raw FITS files so is real, just enhanced due to the curves used to bring out the blobs in the core. I didn't process the core region separately, it got the same curve treatment the halo did and as did the rest of the field. NGC 6211 is also known as UGC 10516. The other galaxies in the chain are also part of UGC 10516 being noted in NED as Notes 1, Notes 2 and Notes 3 in order of increasing distance from NGC 6211/UGC 10516. UGC 10516 Notes 1 is also known as NGC 6213. CGCG 299-018 is Notes 2 and CGCG 0299-019 is Notes 3. The two NGC galaxies were found by Lewis Swift on June 25, 1887.

There's yet another red galaxy in the image down in the lower left corner. I moved the chain left of center to pick it up when making the image. It is the SO/a galaxy UGC 10500 and it too is at the same 240 million light-years distance by redshift as the others. It has some hints of blue but is mostly red like the other 4.

While there are a lot more galaxies and likely at least one galaxy cluster or two in the image, NED had no redshift data on any of them, including one chain member. All 9 galaxies in NED are identified in the annotated image.

This is the last of only 9 objects I was able to catch in June. Short nights and poor skies limited what I could do. July was little better with only 10 new objects captured.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RGB=2x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for NGC6211

NGC6229

NGC 6229 is the "other" globular in Hercules. M13 and M92 get all the attention while poor NGC 6992 tends to be the wallflower. It isn't big and bright as the other two are. Not because it isn't a major globular cluster but because it is about 100,000 light-years away on the outskirts of the galactic halo. Put it in close like M92 and M13 and it would be a grand sight. Discovered by William Herschel in 1787 he cataloged it as a planetary nebula being unable to resolve it into stars. In 1819 Admiral Smyth reports someone recorded it as a comet. This distant guy got no respect it seems.

It was discovered by William Herschel on May 12, 1787. It is in the original H400 program. My entry on a good night with my 10" f/5 at 180x says; "Small globular with a bright core and faint outer halo. Some hint of resolution to the halo. Core bright but not even grainy let alone resolved." My image on a bad night of seeing still managed to resolve it to the center.

While my field contains hundreds of galaxies only 3 and one quasar have redshift data. Since I used 5 minute subs rather than 10 minute subs and only 40 minutes of them, same as I normally do with 10 minute subs, this one doesn't go as deep as normal. I chose to use 5 minute subs for the L channel because that prevented the core from being saturated. By using 5 minute subs I could better resolve the core. To compensate for more read noise I need to take about an hour's worth of data. I forgot about this when taking the image. Still, you can faintly see the quasar at 12 billion light-years light travel time. Since the color filters block a lot of light I could use my normal 10 minute color subs.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=8x5' RGB=2x10'x3, STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for NGC6229

NGC6239

NGC 6239 is a very disturbed spiral in Hercules. Redshift puts it about 42 million light-years distant but other measurements place it much further away ranging from 61 to 83 million light-years with a median value of 73 million I show in the annotated image. If the 42 million light-year figure is right then the main part of the galaxy (not including the loops to the east and plumes to the west is only 18,500 light years in diameter. That's pretty dinky. If the 83 million light-year figure is used then it is a more reasonable 37 million light-years in diameter, about the size of M33 for example. Thus I tend to think the larger Tully-fisher determined distances of 73 to 83 million light-years may be more accurate. It was discovered by William Herschel on April 12, 1788. It is in the second H400 program.

In any case this galaxy appears to have loops on the eastern side and plumes on the western side that indicate some hapless even smaller galaxy was digested by it in the recent past. To the east is AGC 262744 or PGC 2204813 if you prefer that catalog. It has virtually the same redshift and is also highly disturbed looking. Is this also due to an encounter with NGC 6239? Seems possible. An old note (1964) at NED seems to think so. It reads: "Bright complex bar. One short, bright arm. Double outer loop (a helix?). Very faint asymmetric extensions. A most peculiar system! Small colliding pair at 7.5 arcmin." Another indicates there is strong emission spectra (probably HII related) coming from the bar though I didn't pick it up and another note based on a 200" Palomar image also failed to see the HII regions blaming them on being below their seeing limit. So it is no wonder I didn't see them. NED however does classify NGC 6239 as SB(s)b pec? HII. Another to try with the H alpha filter sometime. I've included a very simple process of a raw HST image of the core region of NGC 6239 that shows the star-like objects in the core region of my image are all star knots in the galaxy. Also I see little hint of resolution of the major stars of the galaxy in the HST image. This argues for the a distance greater than redshift would indicate as normally the HST easily resolves a ton of starsNGC 6239 is a very disturbed spiral in Hercules. Redshift puts it about 42 million light-years distant but other measurements place it much further away ranging from 61 to 83 million light-years with a median value of 73 million I show in the annotated image. If the 42 million light-year figure is right then the main part of the galaxy (not including the loops to the east and plumes to the west is only 18,500 light years in diameter. That's pretty dinky. If the 83 million light-year figure is used then it is a more reasonable 37 million light-years in diameter, about the size of M33 for example. Thus I tend to think the larger Tully-fisher determined distances of 73 to 83 million light-years may be more accurate. It was discovered by William Herschel on April 12, 1788. It is in the second H400 program.

In any case, this galaxy appears to have loops on the eastern side and plumes on the western side that indicate some hapless even smaller galaxy was digested by it in the recent past. To the east is AGC 262744 or PGC 2204813 if you prefer that catalog. It has virtually the same redshift and is also highly disturbed looking. Is this also due to an encounter with NGC 6239? Seems possible. An old note (1964) at NED seems to think so. It reads: "Bright complex bar. One short, bright arm. Double outer loop (a helix?). Very faint asymmetric extensions. A most peculiar system! small colliding pair at 7.5 arcmin." Another indicates there are strong emission spectra (probably HII related) coming from the bar though I didn't pick it up and another note based on a 200" Palomar image also failed to see the HII regions blaming them on being below their seeing limit. So it is no wonder I didn't see them. NED, however, does classify NGC 6239 as SB(s)b pec? HII. I've included a very simple process of a raw HST image of the core region of NGC 6239 that shows the star-like objects in the core region of my image are all star knots in the galaxy. Also, I see little hint of resolution of the major stars of the galaxy in the HST image. This argues for a distance greater than redshift would indicate as normally the HST easily resolves a ton of stars in a galaxy at 42 million light-years but few at 80.

AGC 262744 is pretty much ignored by NED as to classification and any published notes on it. So I can't help further with it.

Sometimes serendipity strikes. It has in this case. Look to the annotated image for SDSS J1650+4251 to the upper left of NGC 6239. It is the combined light of a galaxy at some 5.6 billion light-years and a lensed quasar at almost 9.5 billion light-years. Thanks to my lousy seeing I can't separate the two. I doubt any of the galaxy's light is seen and all I'm picking up is multiple images of the quasar. As seen in the SDSS image it appears to be a lensed into two or maybe three blue blobs of light. The SDSS image is at 0.2" per pixel. I can't see the lensing galaxy in their image either. There is a color difference that may indicate the galaxy is mixed with the southern image of the quasar. It may show only spectroscopically as a separate object. I had no idea it was in the image until I asked NED for what all was in the image that had a measured redshift. This isn't the first surprise I've had doing this. It happens every few months. Another reason to research your images. You might find a pleasant surprise lurking there you never suspected such as this lensed quasar.

Otherwise, the image is rather typical of what I'd expect imaging in Hercules. Several galaxy clusters and lots of distant galaxies. I've added a new flag on the distance estimates. Most are redshift determined spectroscopically using NED's 5 year WMAP calculator. Those with a "p" after the distance. One, however, has the label of "f". That stands for "Friend of Friend" which is used when it is assumed the object is related to others and its distance uses other well determined redshifts of assumed nearby objects to calculate its distance estimate.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RGB=2x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME in a galaxy at 42 million light-years but few at 80.

AGC 262744 is pretty much ignored by NED as to classification and any published notes on it. So I can't help further with it.

Sometimes serendipity strikes. It has in this case. Look to the annotated image for SDSS J1650+4251 to the upper left of NGC 6239. It is the combined light of a galaxy at some 5.6 billion light-years and a lensed quasar at almost 9.5 billion light-years. Thanks to my lousy seeing I can't separate the two. I doubt any of the galaxy's light is seen and all I'm picking up is multiple images of the quasar. As seen in the SDSS image it appears to be a lensed into two or maybe three blue blobs of light. The SDSS image is at 0.2" per pixel. I can't see the lensing galaxy in their image either. There is a color difference that may indicate the galaxy is mixed with the southern image of the quasar. It may show only spectroscopically as a separate object. I had no idea it was in the image until I asked NED for what all was in the image that had a measured redshift. This isn't the first surprise I've had doing this. It happens every few months. Another reason to research your images. You might find a pleasant surprise lurking there you never suspected such as this lensed quasar.

Otherwise the image is rather typical of what I'd expect imaging in Hercules. Several galaxy clusters and lots of distant galaxies. I've added a new flag on the distance estimates. Most are redshift determined spectroscopically using NED's 5 year WMAP calculator. Those with a "p" after the distance. One however has the label of "f". That stands for "Friend of Friend" which is used when it is assumed the object is related to others and its distance uses other well determined redshifts of assumed nearby objects to calculate its distance estimate.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RGB=2x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for NGC6239

NGC6240

How Arp missed or decided against putting this rather famous galaxy in his catalog I can't fathom. During the time of his atlas, the best anyone could do in understanding this one was shown in comments like this from a 1964 paper: "Complex core with strong dark lane. Distorted. Faint outer filament. No nearby object of similar size. Another very peculiar object." We now know this is the result of a galaxy merger. It has two nuclei only 1.8" apart. As the early paper says it is quite alone in space. This makes the merger all the more surprising. The galaxy is a super-luminous IRAS (infrared) galaxy and a starburst galaxy. Both likely the result of the merger. It has spectral characteristics of LINER and Seyfert 2 galaxies. Redshift puts it 335 million light-years away and is seen against the stars of Ophiuchus. It is well covered by the HST. They say it is 400 million light-years distant. I can't explain the difference but it does show the difficulty of determining distance to such objects. It was discovered by Édouard Stephan on July 12, 1871. For further information on this merger and to see the great HST image of it go to: http://www.spacetelescope.org/static/archives/images/large/heic0810ai.jpg

The only other galaxy in the image with any redshift data is HELLAS 190. This is an X-ray catalog with very poor resolution. The error bar was so large several possible objects were within the error circle, all very near the limit of my image. Its redshift puts it 4.2 billion light years away. Virtually everything else comes from the 2MASS survey of infrared objects. None have any distance data.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=5x10' RGB=2x10'x3, STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for NGC6240

NGC6248

NGC 6248 is a low surface brightness blue barred spiral located in Draco southeast of the bowl of the Little Dipper. It is classified as SBcd or SBd depending on the source. Redshift puts it about 51 million light-years distant while other measurements all show it much further away. Their average is about 84 million light-years. I measure the extreme length of the major axis to be 198" of arc. That translates to a diameter of 49,000 to 81,000 light-years. Most blue low surface brightness galaxies with little spiral structure I've imaged are usually less than 50,000 light-years in size. So I'm going to go with the closer and thus smaller size as I can't find anything else on this galaxy to help decide this issue.

In fact, this entire field is poorly studied. NED lists only 3 small galaxies in my frame beside NGC 6248, none of which have even a magnitude estimate let alone a redshift measurement. The Galex satellite records some 500 objects in the frame, all of which are listed at NED as being an Ultraviolet Source. Some are galaxies in my image, most are stars. Galex could only give approximate positions for its objects resulting in an error circle of about 7 seconds of arc. This makes identifying these more difficult as often two or three objects are in the error circle. I didn't try to sort out which were galaxies as they also have no distance, magnitude or much other data and are listed only by coordinates.

This galaxy was discovered by Lewis Swift on August 11, 1885. It seems most low surface brightness galaxies are very blue like this. The blue stars are quite short-lived, 10 to 100 million years and they are history. What were they before and after this short time span? Do they have or are collecting enough dust and hydrogen to keep forming new stars continually for billions of years? If so they should gain a lot of mass yet that isn't happening that I find. Anyone seen this issue discussed in any paper?

This is yet another object that, thanks to weather took many nights to collect enough data. It was started on the morning of July 4 and finished 19 days later on July 23. Most frames were unusable due to weather. I wanted more data due to this one being so faint but, as has been often the case this year, that never happened. I gave up and decided to go with what I had and try moving on to something else.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RGB=2x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for NGC6248

NGC6255

NGC 6255 is a low surface brightness barred spiral galaxy toward the upper middle of the keystone of Hercules about 42 million light-years distant by redshift. Other measurements are all over the board ranging from 56 to 104 million light-years with a median of 68 million light-years. All indicate it is further than the redshift value. So I'll assume the median value is the more reasonable one. At that distance, it is about 75,000 light-years across, rather typical for a spiral though large for most low surface brightness ones I've imaged. While it has a bright bar I see no core or central bulge.

On its east edge is a bright blue star cloud so bright it almost looks like a field star in my image. Several sources including NED say it is a separate galaxy with HII emission though what few notes I find on it say it is just a rich, dense star cloud in the galaxy. One reads: "The galaxy has been noted to have a possible companion (HS 1653+3634) which lies 75" to the east. It seems more likely from GALEX data that this object is just a particularly bright, blue cluster complex in the XUV-disk of NGC 6255." I tend to agree. Redshift would indicate that is the case as well with that side if the galaxy rotating toward us reducing the measured redshift slightly. In any case, I've marked it in the annotated image.

NGC 6225 was discovered on May 16, 1787 by William Herschel but being so faint it didn't make either of the Herschel 400 observing lists. I suspect it would be a difficult target for even a 16" scope seen visually.

I moved it to the west from center as even in the 10-second framing image I'd taken I saw what appeared to be two galaxy clusters well to the east and wanted to better include them in the frame. Turns out that was a good idea as they both show quite nicely. The galaxy was so faint I'd hoped to get at least 8 frames of luminance and 3 for each color but that meant two nights work in early July and the weather just didn't cooperate. I took this data on July 3, my first July image but the fifth luminance frame was severely hurt by dawn. I included it but doubt it helped much if any. I put it back on the list for a second run but that never happened so I went with the data I was able to get.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=5x10' RGB=2x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for NGC6255